But perhaps the most memorable and riveting part of his speech was when he spoke of his father. “It’s no secret how important he was to my life and to my career”, Favre, whose dad coached him in high school, said on the eve of the induction. He never told his father he heard his dad’s remark, but it stuck with him.
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And when he choked up talking about his late father, Irv, and how Favre spent his career “trying to redeem myself” to make Irv proud, the crowd offered loud and comforting support. “I hope I succeeded”.
There was a thank you to his wife, Deanna, which started with Favre telling a story about going to a New Orleans Saints game when he was 14.
But rather than have me talk about this Hall of Famer, the night belonged to him, so here, in it’s entirety is the acceptance speech of Brett Favre, introduced by the two greatest influences in his life, his wife and presenter Deanna, and his father Irvin. Then he thanked the fans, saying, “Make no mistake about it: I will be remembered as a Packer”.
“Frankly, I think we could use a little bit more of that sense of family in the National Football League today”.
Favre struggled to get through the tribute to his father, pausing multiple times to compose himself.
“This is tougher than any third-and-15”, he said.
“I would not be here before you today without my father”.
“I have never thrown an interception that has been my fault”.
Favre joined Marvin Harrison, Tony Dungy, Kevin Greene, Orlando Pace, Ken Stabler, Dick Stanfel and Eddie DeBartolo Jr in the 2016 class of football greats who were immortalised during a special ceremony. These are guys I grew up watching and then I got the opportunity to play with him.he’s doing something that very select few, the 1% of all athletics get to do, go into their professional Hall of Fames. So, as I bolted and ducked my head and made my way through all of our classmates, there was one person that caught my eye and one person only.
Stabler quarterbacked the Oakland Raiders to the AFC title game each season form 1973-77.
He said the Hall of Fame wasn’t a consideration in his mind until a revelation on the plane ride to MS for his father’s funeral following the Raiders game.
A second-round pick of the Atlanta Falcons in the 1991 NFL Draft, the former Southern Miss quarterback was traded to the Packers a year later.
“I believed that every game he played in, his team had an opportunity to win because of Brett Favre”, Wolf said this week. If you had, somebody else might be standing here talking.
“This is tougher than any 3rd-and-15, I can assure you”, Favre said, as he continued. We had chartered a flight back from Oakland to get Christmas gifts back to Green Bay, take a brief nap and go to the service, and Christmas back in Mississippi. It was the first of six straight playoff appearances that included two Super Bowl berths and victory in Super Bowl XXXI.
Quarterback Brett Favre, an NFL MVP three straight years beginning in 1995 and a Super Bowl victor, played 20 seasons and 302 games with four teams – the Atlanta Falcons, Green Bay Packers, New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings.
He was chosen to play in 11 Pro Bowls and retired with league records for passing yards (71,838), touchdown passes (508), completions (6,300) and attempts (10,169).
In that game, he threw for 399 yards and 4 touchdowns with a near flawless passer rating of 154.9.
The Packers retired Favre’s No. 4 previous year and inducted him into the team’s Hall of Fame.
We found answers to both questions (“I’m not going to break the record for the shortest speech in Hall of Fame history” – it was about 11 minutes – and he sounded like a grown man giving a speech), but none of that really mattered. He’s a true perfectionist, and I’m sure Steve (Young) and Joe (Montana) would say the same thing.
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Brett Favre played from the heart for 16 seasons with the Green Bay Packers, 20 season overall. I always rode to and from school with my father in his truck and so he was always the last one to leave the building because he had to turn the light off, lock up, and then we made our way home. This isn’t news, necessarily, given that Dungy hadn’t played quarterback since college (he said he knew just eight offensive plays), but he also intercepted a pass in that same game – the last player to pull off the feat. “Being real, authentic and spontaneous and having fun is what it was all about”.
